The New Predator--Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers

The New Predator--Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers

Excerpt

Why is so little known about women who kill? What drives them? How do they operate? Are they the same as male murderers, or do they (and the crimes they commit) differ in critical ways?

The number of unsolved homicides and unclassified murders has steadily increased, and we need better information and better tools in order to unravel these perplexing cases — and, hopefully, to help prevent new ones. This study on female multicide is intended to provide at least partial answers to some of the fundamental questions, and to indicate some of the areas that still remain to be investigated.

Existing literature on the phenomenon of female-perpetrated multicide does provide basic profiles of the women and their crimes, but until now, most research has concentrated on male offenders. This book is an in-depth study of females convicted of multiple murder in the United States and is, we believe, the first to be based on direct inperson interviews with the women themselves. Thus it offers invaluable insights that have never before been available to law enforcement professionals, counselors, and others who are concerned with con-